Full Pundit: Should Stephen Harper go to Sri Lanka?

Trouble in the CommonwealthThere is no sugarcoating the ongoing human rights abuses in Sri Lanka, the National Post‘s John Ivison argues, and the Commonwealth has offered “precious little condemnation” of them. Moreover, he says, “this resolve to see no evil, far less criticize it, has become characteristic of an organization that has forgotten why it came into being.” As such, in Ivison’s view, Stephen Harper’s refusal to attend the upcoming Commonwealth meeting in Sri Lanka is both perfectly justified and, Senator Hugh Segal tells him, perfectly in keeping with Harper’s brand of foreign policy.

The Post‘s Kelly McParlandisn’t so sureconsistency is particularly a hallmark of Harper’s approach to human rights abroad, however, considering he has “embraced [China] as a major trade partner and investor in Canada” and “showed no reluctance to attend a G-20 gathering in St. Petersburg last month.” Indeed.

Senator Hugh Segal himself, writing in TheGlobe and Mail, recounts first-hand observations of the Tamils’ plight in Sri Lanka: “I saw wonderful new highways and buildings in Colombo that would rival those in Toronto. I also saw the bullet holes above the sofa in the office of the editor of a Tamil language newspaper in Jaffna,” he writes. “For the Commonwealth of Nations to bestow the honour on Sri Lanka of hosting [the Heads of Government Meeting] and presiding over the organization as its chair for two years legitimizes a multitude of sins and is the surest way to weaken the Commonwealth and bring its credibility into serious disrepute,” Segal argues.

The Globe‘s editorialists, meanwhile, swoon in shock over Harper calling Canada’s monetary contribution to the Commonwealth into question.

The Toronto Star‘s editorialists would prefer Harper went to Sri Lanka and voiced his displeasure on there, which does strike us as more likely to have an effect, especially given that a mass boycott doesn’t seem to be in the offing.

Back at home, Postmedia’s Andrew Coyne wishes it were true, as Susan Delacourt argues in her new book, that politicians nowadays “treat voters as consumers, rather than citizens.” “As a rule,” he says, “consumers tend to be rather better treated.” And he doesn’t think it’s a particularly new phenomenon, either. “Politics has always been a grubby business, bartered between pandering politicians and disengaged, barely literate voters,” he argues, though perhaps the “disciplined, scientific methods” applied to achieve “the same disreputable ends” nowadays gives it an even sleazier sheen. Mind you, as Coyne says, at least “parties must now … make their pitch to voters, rather than simply harvest them” along family, religious or ethnic lines.

Provincial affairsLes Leyne of the Victoria Times-Colonist thinks a fall sitting of the British Columbia legislature would actually have been to Premier Christy Clark’s advantage. The New Democrats are “in the middle of a protracted internal review of everything that went wrong” in their election collapse. “What better time to give them some face time in the legislature?” Plus, you know, the Liberals actually could have passed some legislation — stuff they have identified as priorities. Oh, well.

The Edmonton Journal‘s Paula Simons doesn’t think an evangelical Christian organization whose “curriculum is built on specific church doctrine” should be teaching sex education to public school students. Needless to say, we agree. Also, don’t drink bleach and don’t drive while blindfolded. What a bizarre situation.

The Star‘s editorialists want Toronto City Council, which successfully strong-armed the province into paying for most of a subway line to Scarborough, thus scuppering a perfectly good LRT option, to now reject said subway, because it’s too expensive, and approve the LRT option that it only recently rejected. Please feel free to laugh at us.

Did you hear the one about Quebecers being desperate for “a new style of politics”? Well, it’s a little more complicated than that. Because as Don Macpherson notes in the Montreal Gazette, it looks like Denis Coderre is going to be the next Mayor of Montreal, and he’s “a caricature of the old-fashioned pol: glad-handing, backslapping, winking and grinning — everything but the cigar and the homburg hat.” Coderre has also “welcomed into his [team] several refugees from the discredited Union Montreal, whose last two mayors were forced to resign in disgrace,” Macpherson observes. And the first poll has him comfortably in the lead.

All eyes on CairoThe Post‘s Jonathan Kay suspects that all the attention being focused on Egypt for its detention of Canadians Tarek Loubani and John Greyson will have the somewhat ironic effect — given their political leanings — of restoring “some measure of proportionality … to our perception of human-rights abuses in the Middle East.” If your concern is human rights or indeed human life, in other words, obsessing over Israel doesn’t make a heck of a lot of sense.